I had an email reply from team 1 a couple of months before I received my second stage letter. The next email reply I received was also from team 1, a few months after I received my second stage letter. For me at least there is no pattern.

guys, don't stress too much on the teams and stages. There is no pattern followed by this department.
Also, don't confuse with teams sending you written letters and the teams responding to your emails. They are different.

My experience, the team which issued the first letter remains the same throughout when responding to my written queries, so if your application is assigned to one team when it was received you will always receive correspondence from them when it comes about written letters. My team remained 1 from start till now. Check the written letters you received from the department, I am almost certain they all will be from the same team.

As far as email teams are concerned, they are random and has nothing to do with the stages of your application, and they vary from team 1 to team 7.

Well said, fine paddy, they don't care how important citizenship is for you, it is yet another 9:00-17:00 day for them and out of these 8 hours they may or may not work for 1-2 hours per day depending on their mood.

Working in a high turnover job myself, i tend to empathize with the team members. They are dealing with a a lot of applications and they are Im sure doing their best without getting themselves burntout.

I know waiting and having no control is frustrating, but we need to understand the nature of environment they are in. Really, they need to use technology not humans. And allow us access online to the genealogy of the application.

guys, don't stress too much on the teams and stages. There is no pattern followed by this department.
Also, don't confuse with teams sending you written letters and the teams responding to your emails. They are different.

My experience, the team which issued the first letter remains the same throughout when responding to my written queries, so if your application is assigned to one team when it was received you will always receive correspondence from them when it comes about written letters. My team remained 1 from start till now. Check the written letters you received from the department, I am almost certain they all will be from the same team.

As far as email teams are concerned, they are random and has nothing to do with the stages of your application, and they vary from team 1 to team 7.

Well said, fine paddy, they don't care how important citizenship is for you, it is yet another 9:00-17:00 day for them and out of these 8 hours they may or may not work for 1-2 hours per day depending on their mood.